D&D meets Chess, Carcassonne: Ars reviews Drakon

Drakon may use tiles, but it's heavy on the strategy and uses its fantasy …

Due to overwhelming support for more coverage of board games, we're going to continue the trend by taking a look at Drakon, a tile-based strategy game.

Drakon has a simple premise: you are in the lair of a dragon and are trying to collect his gold. The first player to have ten gold pieces wins. During each turn you have the choice to either lay down a tile or move your character, and each tile represents an action or ability for your player. You may get to take a coin from the pile, or take over the mind of your opponent and move him, or remove a tile from the board, or force another player to move a certain way.

It's an easy game to learn, and the included cheat sheets for the 17 kinds of tile make looking up each ability a simple thing until you get used to the icons, but the strategy can become very deep, very fast. Setting traps, controlling where the players can go, and spoiling your opponents' long-term plans are all necessary for success.

Each tile has arrows that show you how a character can move; you can only move from tile to tile by following the arrows, and you can't lay a tile that points to another arrow. This allows you to use your tiles to create a path through the dungeon, which is in itself a strategy; it's easy to limit a players' options as they move along the tiles you've laid, but they're going to try to bust out by using the tiles in their own hand. A carefully constructed coin-collecting loop can be ruined when another player plays a tile that allows them to spin a section and change your direction. There are tiles that allow you to destroy useful abilities on the board, and tiles that allow you to warp around the board unrestricted. Each tile you land on or play does something, and they all must be juggled for an effective strategy.

None of the action described so far includes the dragon, who is oddly passive throughout the experience. The first person to play a dragon tile gets to place him anywhere on the board. From then on, if you play a dragon tile and land on it then you can move the dragon three tiles in any direction. If he lands on you, you lose a coin and get sent back to the start. Using your tiles, moving the dragon smartly, and keeping tabs on the traps set by the other players—it all takes strategy and planning.

A game in progress

In one match, my opponent was busy simply laying down coin-tiles and moving to them to try to get to ten, and I was busy setting a trap across the board by laying a coin tile, a tile that allowed me to steal one of his coins, and a dragon tile. My plan? Collect-steal-kill.

Once the three were next to each other he saw my plan, and when I laid down the teleporter next to my character to move onto the first tile in the sequence he moved to a tile that allowed him to burn the teleporter. He then moved to a tile that spun me, pointing me in the wrong direction and limiting my movement actions. Finally I played the escape tile, which warps my character to wherever that tile is placed, and my friend's only strategy became getting out of the range of the dragon.

There is nothing worse than enjoying your bank roll, only to have your opponent land on the mind-control power and force you to land on a tile that makes you give up one of your coins. The cloud tiles force you to move two tiles along any legal path, so placing a coin tile adjacent to it means that without some serious board manipulation that coin will never be collected. Once we became comfortable with strategy, play picked up rapidly, with tricks, traps, and wickedly devious paths being laid down.

The pieces themselves are made out of thick cardboard and feel great in your hand. Be careful when you punch them out of the plates however, I had one or two rip, but with a steady hand this shouldn't be a problem. The characters are made of unpainted plastic, and can be replaced with anything; the pewter dragon you see in these pictures was something I had sitting around and used instead of the stock dragon marker. You can play with two to six players, and our games lasted around 30 minutes.

The variants are also interesting: you can play so that each character gets a class-specific ability to play once per game, and you can play so that after you collect enough coins you must escape the dungeon. We also tried playing a version where two players on the same tile will roll one die six to "battle" for a single coin. Yes, it's random, but it adds a little bit of chaos into the mix.

The rules can be learned in minutes, and are laid out clearly in the manual. And the game is a great time once you understand what's possible. The outcome isn't random; you can actively plan for and stop anything the other guy is doing as long as you have a few good tiles in your hand. This is a game that now has a home in my collection, and I can't wait to play again.

Though I've been a fan of Ars for a long time, I just created an account to chime in, perhaps uselessly given the obviously rampant enthusiasm, and echo the great appreciation for these board game reviews. The only negative thing is that it does make me slightly more jealous of your job...

...also, a small typo: "a version where two players on the same tile will *role* one die six"

It does strike me as a little bit sad that there is so much talk of buying this online... game shops are one of the retail niches where mom & pop shops still do okay. I realize that you typically pay a premium for the good service & recommendations, and ars is providing much of that service through this article, but I still wish people would support their local game stores. ...maybe I'm just too romantic about the community that game shops foster...

Perhaps I am old school, but I remember before Facebook and all the other ilk, board games where the ultimate social experience. Had lots of fun, and many were very creative and allowed you to be creative.

I love playing Cranium Board Games with my family -- we have a blast during the holidays.My brother and I are MechWarrior fans but that turns most people off.

Simple for everyone to pick-up and party games would be great to see. This sounds simple enough to play and the fact that you can Sabotage each other makes for great fun between the cousins. I will take this over madden 11 any day.

Don't get me wrong, I love video games as well, but they are less social than board games.

While I agree with someone above about supporting local Mom and Pop shops where board games are sold, my problem with all the ones I have been too locally is a) they are of the D&D recommendation, or the shop owner is a "build it and they will come" type and does not actually play. I find the recommedatoins lacking.

Sounds like a really neat game that would both be easy to get started on while offering a lot of options for more advanced play =) It sounds like there's really nothing that has to be memorized to start playing, and by the time you were really trying trickier/deeper strategies you'd probably already remember what the different tiles did without needing to check ^.^

Is this game related to Games Workshop's ancient DragonQuest game? That had a similar system of placing tiles to determine a map through a dungeon (to raid treasure from a dragon's lair, as well). The artwork even looks similar...

Wonderful! More board game reviews plz. This game looks exactly the style I was looking for. If nothing else I know you are going to score a few bucks when I buy it. I also second the suggestion for number of players and game length in the box. Great review through. I really hope we see more. Video game reviews are a dime a dozen, but a quality board game review is gold.

Wow, why? A board game is a computer game where you have to tabulate entries by hand. Next, let's play Doom with a sliderule.This site's credibility just dropped if this is the audience you're catering to.

This comment just made my day. Orange Catholic would probably like "mind games" reviews, where you play alone, eyes closed, in your mind, without any interaction with the physical world whatsoever. There are even MM versions where you invent thousands of friends you're playing with/against.

I've played board games recently. They're not as social as you think. When you play any type of game, you make a bunch of people sit down and follow a set of rules. It's like being in a classroom. All very polite and boring.

The hangup you're having is that since there's only one computer in your house, you assume that's the maximum number of computers that can be inside a building, and that a computer can only have one user. All computer users are alone. Forever.

Really, how are board games more "social" than Mario Kart? They're exactly the same except much slower AND easier to win.

Great review. I was mildly concerned that board game reviews were going to just cover the big name games and not be terribly interesting to anyone who already has them, so I'm pleasantly surprised to find the first review after Arkham Horror is something I've never heard of. I particularly like the way you've conveyed the feel of playing the game.

Wow, why? A board game is a computer game where you have to tabulate entries by hand. Next, let's play Doom with a sliderule.

This site's credibility just dropped if this is the audience you're catering to.

I'd say the site's credibility would drop if it started catering to an audience of really small minded people.

Board games are different to computer games, just like sports are different to computer games. If they're not for you: fine, don't play them. Surely you don't require so much vindication for your own likes and dislikes that you can't handle other people liking different things?